ICONOCLASTIC IS REACTIONARY [short fiction]

To be iconoclastic is to be narrow, to be far, far less than intelligent, astute, perceptive, sensitive. It allows us to remain inarticulate, unable to speak or write the complexities or contradictions of history. It is born of a reactionary politique to become reactionary politics–reactionary is not only Right Wing. It can and is in America also what calls itself Left Wing, but maybe we need to re=assess just what we are calling Liberal in America, as confused and confusing as it has become. To be iconoclastic is to be hyper conservative. This had already become one of our favorite cultural engagements in America a couple of decades ago. Iconoclasm prevents us from being insightful when confronting history, disallows us from maintaining an astute focus on Truth and the many lesser truths that accumulate when having to examine the depth and complexities of history. It plays into the hands of Power and Monied Elites by allowing us to be satisfied with the visceral instead of the literate, the intelligent. To be anti-Black and even anti-White, which too many African Americans actually are, is to be iconoclastic . . . destroying the icons of history is more grossly absurd than to genuflect without thought or consideration before these icons of culture, icons of history, icons of our political past. The nauseating degree of revision in much of what purports to be corrected history I suspect as I have always suspected one or another brand of this in our past, from whomever, whenever, wherever, however, moreover . . .